“For those who still believe”: Tim Allen returns, six years later, as Santa with a problem: the misses clause.

Officially, the de-Santafication has begun, and if he is unable to find a wife by Christmas Eve, he will cease to be. In order to keep the North Pole running and find a likely candidate, the “real” Santa creates a toy-like doppelgänger. There are some banal familial issues (Allen’s son has teen angst, mostly from the school principal, who also just may be Allen’s match), and the Toy Santa becomes something of a Nazi Santa, but all in all, The Santa Clause 2 is much more innocuous and much less obnoxious than its predecessor. (Not always, but enough to render it tolerable.) There are some additional sparks from Elizabeth Mitchell, who can’t help but melt her ice-princess image away.